Product Description

Always hated liner notes - always hated any kinda writing about rock'n'roll - I mean, why don't ya just shut up & listen to the music? - but here I am now, trying to catch in words what I think & feel about my good friend Clap & about these fine & dandy tales he's spun - tales of life on & off the road with a band called okay - a band in which I am lead singer - & in which Clap is drummer - not the world's greatest, technically, even he'd admit to that - but solid & deep & swingin' & truthful - & I suppose that's what I want to say this here book is - truth-full - if I'd written it, it would be all about high times & honeys - & Clap has gotten down that wild stuff - but he's also told the cold truth about the things you lose along the way - & I think he's done it just about as well as it coulda been done - & believe me, I should know: I wasn't there for most of it. Stay cool, Syph x.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #264741 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
Praise for Toby Litt: 'One of the most inventive and original writers around' Sunday Mirror 'Toby Litt is awfully good -- he gives something new every time he writes' Muriel Spark

The Scotsman
"Toby Litt, playful and perverse writer that he is, uses the music as a device for musing on broader themes of masculinity, spirituality, the ageing process, and, OK, sex and drugs and the Zen implications of a solid 4-4 beat. . . bitterly funny . . . the cumulative effect of Clap's confessionals is a poignant perspective on the corruption of success"

The Guardian
"This is no mere rockumentry; Litt, who is nothing if not serious about writing, is giving us a weighty, ambitious take on the male mid-life crisis...this is a serious, nostalgic novel about growing old and growing up"

Customer Reviews

I read this book and it's more than okay
Novels made up from short stories are extremely difficult to pull off correctly. All too often they don't read as a vaguely connected collection which doesn't hold as a cohesive whole (even the master of this type of book - Ray Bradbury - only really got it right with Dandelion Wine). This book doesn't fall into that trap. It works equally well as a selection of short stories or a novel.

And what a novel!

This is one of the best books I've read this year. We follow the eponymous Drummer in Canadian indie band okay (small letters, italicised) from their formation as a group of teens in their garage all the way into middle age and parenthood. The rock and roll excesses are there but they're not the focus of the book. Why go for the clichés all over again. There are so many books about sex and drugs and rock and roll do we really need another one?

This book takes a more down to earth overview of the situation - all from the point of view of Clap, the drummer. Some of the stories move effortlessly from laugh out loud funny to complete tragedy in a matter of lines (in particular the story of the obsessed fan who waits for weeks in a hotel room for the band's lead singer - living on nothing but water and chocolate).

The writing is uniformly good throughout, the tone shifting nicely from the frenetic opening chapters to the more thoughtful and reserved later pages. Some of the images stick with you for a long while after - the girls voice described as sounding like an operatic cow yodelling down a mine shaft - after first falling down the mine shaft is a particular favourite of mine.

Five stars for me. Buy this book!

Tales of excess and morality
Told from the viewpoint of Clap, drummer in okay a Canadian indie band (other members Syph, Mono, and Crab) who are approaching middle age and the ill-advised albums and money making tours that come along with it.

The tales of excess and amplified ideas of importance are reminiscent of what you hear wheeled out in Nickelbacks's (shudders) mega hit `Rock Star' - cringeworthy, realistic and what you'd expect from a world famous (albeit fictional) band.

Rather than being like 'The Dirt' this has another level, which foloows Clap's journey from excess to Buddhism via infidelity fatherhood and realisation of his own mortality. It could have been approached with sarcasm and too much knowing, but Litt's depiction of the flawed yet nicest member of okay is self deprecating, and amusing without being clichéd.

Although at points the narrative seems to lose it's way, the anecdotes and the lessons learnt are worth sticking with it for when it gets back on track.